BRO-Roads Ministry tussle hits Uttarakhand projects

For the last three years, according to BRO officials, Project Shivalik has had a tough time getting both funding and sanctions.

NEW DELHI: A silent tug-of-war between the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the ministry of road transport and highways appears to have affected the condition of hundreds of kilometres of roads on the Char Dham pilgrimage trail in Uttarakhand. The BRO taskforce Project Shivalik maintains more than 1,000 km of roads in Uttarakhand, including 650 km of national highways along the pilgrimage trail. Most of the roads damaged during the flashfloods in the state last month fall in this category.

The national highways are funded by the roads ministry, which allocates funds to public works departments in states for the maintenance of these highways, apart from the BRO, which maintains roads in border regions in Jammu & Kashmir and the northeastern states, apart from Uttarakhand.

For the last three years, according to BRO officials, Project Shivalik has had a tough time getting both funding and sanctions for individual projects from the roads ministry. In 2012-13, for instance, while Project Shivalik asked for 610 crore as part of its Annual Works Plan, the ministry approved 190 crore. However, while the unit submitted 21 draft project reports worth 206.84 crore for the ministry's approval, only one project, worth 22.9 crore, was approved during the fiscal.

Part of the work that the BRO unit was proposing to undertake involved double-laning of the routes to Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. Parts of these roads were also damaged in the flashfloods that hit the region in early 2012. While the BRO has access to a separate maintenance fund, it is meant for emergency repair and is much smaller in comparison. According to a senior official at Project Shivalik, who asked not to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media, the roads would have been in much better shape in time for the pilgrimage this year, had some of the proposed works been taken up.

"It is true that what we have asked for, we have not received," Project Shivalik chief engineer KK Razdan said.

The road ministry's reluctance to fund and sanction the projects in fact caused concern even in the state administration. On March 7, chief minister Vijay Bahuguna wrote to the then roads minister CP Joshi seeking his intervention in the matter. "I would like to bring to your kind notice that in the Annual Work Plan for 2012-13, Project Shivalik had projected an amount of 631.34 crore. However, MoRTH has directed that the same should be reduced drastically by more than 60% even though a lot of damage has taken place during the last monsoons," Bahuguna wrote.

Joshi appears to have directed the chief minister to the defence ministry. On April 16, Bahuguna wrote to Antony: "I understand from Shri CP Joshiji that funds for BRO are provided by the ministry of defence..." In April, state tourism minister Amrita Rawat, who is married to Satpal Maharaj, the Lok Sabha MP from Garhwal, also wrote to the defence ministry seeking its urgent intervention.

Joshi declined to comment for this story, saying it would be inappropriate to comment as he was no longer the roads minister. Present roads minister Oscar Fernandes could not be reached for comment.

The BRO, an organisation that builds roads on the world's toughest mountains and then puts cheeky roadsigns on them, gets funding from the home ministry, the external affairs ministry and the defence ministry, apart from the roads ministry. But the funds for the national highways come from the roads ministry, while the defence ministry funds roads in the border region that are mostly meant for defence use. Operationally, the BRO comes under the defence ministry and a large number of its top officers, including the officer who heads the organisation, are on deputation from Indian Army's engineering corps.

Roads ministry chief engineer RKPandey said sanctions for many BRO projects are held up because proposals are not sent in the required format or sufficient information is not provided. But it is unclear how such a large number of projects could be held up year after year (see chart) without intervention from above.

A number of roads ministry officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the ministry is unhappy with BRO's style of functioning. While the organisation does all the work with departmental staff, including vast numbers of casual labourers hired for an entire work season, the ministry is keen that more work is outsourced on the lines of the EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) model it has now adopted for all its projects across the country.

"We are keen that Shivalik vacates some of the roads and moves to the higher reaches in Uttarakhand where their expertise is better utilised. Most of the work they do now can very easily be done by the public works department in the state, which outsources the work to private contractors. The cost is lower, delivery is on time and we can penalise them if the maintenance is not good," a senior official in the roads ministry said.

The BRO officials, however, are quick to read motives behind the ministry's preference for private contractors, alleging that the contractors are able to get the files to move in the ministry and get works sanctioned on time.

The friction over this matter had reached such a head that late last year, the ministry and the BRO negotiated a settlement. Under this, the BRO is expected to move to a model where 80% of the work is outsourced, while only 20% is done by departmental staff. There is much resistance to this move from within the BRO, as this would mean lesser funding, relocation of a large number of staff and even potential downsizing in some units.